To walk away ...

How much can you take? How much can you manage? What is it with society that through decades and centuries has not been able to find a way to help humanity as a whole? Why is it that war and injustice permeates around us? Why is it that people in power wants more and takes away from others without looking back?

Homeless in London (June 2003)

A man pushing a stroller; two young adults sleeping in the sidewalk, in front of a store; another man sleeping in the park, with his bags around him. How many have you seen? In big cities and in little towns, you will always find them around.

Urban nomads or homeless

Young or old, does it really matter? Urban nomads or homeless, is there really a difference? They travel from one city to another in search of odd jobs, they don’t stay long, they are always in the run.

In Stateman’s article, young Julie thought she was not homeless, although she had lived in the streets for more than five years already, since she was fifteen years old. She missed her dad, but did not feel going back home a real possibility. Maybe settling down sometime in the future could be a possibility to consider, finding a job and a secure place to stay seemed like an easier lifestyle. But, would she ever?

Stateman cites the Beth Israel Medical Center study saying: “… urban nomads are defined as youths who have traveled to at least five different cities or towns in the past three years, and at least three within the past year.”

Many dress in black and are covered in tattoos. Have you seen them in the corner of 13th St. and University Ave. at Gainesville? I have! They were selling hand made jewelry, they were not begging for money, did not looked stoned; they were just there, sitting in the corner.

For more information on New York’s urban nomads read Stateman’s article.

A world of strangers (Ch. 1)

“People suffer from hunger, death, loneliness, and inequality” (p. 1).

We see them all the time, but we choose not to do anything. Urban nomads come and go, moving from place to place, looking for something they might not know of, looking for a space to belong to.

Spradley choose the urban nomads as the main subject of his book. He writes not only to show us their world, but also to make us become aware of all the injustices committed against them, people just like us, that for some reason ‘lost their way home’.

He writes, ‘This book is an attempt to build a bridge of understanding by providing a description of their [the urban nomads’] way of life from the insider’s point of view” (p. 6). It looks at their culture, “the set of rules they employ, the characteristic ways in which they categorize, code, and define their own experience” (p. 7).

‘A world of strangers’ is opening to our eyes. We should see, here, and speak!

To be marginalized

I almost cannot believe I'm doing this again. But here I am, blogging once more. This time I'll be commenting on a book that looks at the marginalized, people with no home, that live in the streets. Although it is set on the sixties, it is not a problem of the twentieth century alone. Social history shows us that for centuries it has been with us; forty years after the publication of Spradley's book the "problem" is still with us.

I'll like to read a little from James P. Spradley and add some of today's news about the urban nomads. It is sad, but very true. Everywhere we go, we find people living in the streets, specially if you visit big cities.

Keep coming back to see what's in.